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Negotiations With Taliban Could Hinge on Detainees

WASHINGTON — Two were senior Taliban commanders said to be implicated in murdering thousands of Shiites in Afghanistan. When asked about the alleged war crimes by an interrogator, they “did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ideal state,” according to their interrogators.

There is also a former deputy director of Taliban intelligence, a former senior Taliban official said to have “strong operational ties” to various extremist militias, and a former Taliban minister accused of having sought help from Iran in attacking American forces.

These five prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could be the key to whether the negotiations the United States has long sought with the Taliban are a success, or even take place. A Taliban spokesman in Qatar said Thursday that exchanging them for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American prisoner of war who has been held by militants since 2009, would be a way to “build bridges of confidence” to start broader peace talks.

Less than a month ago, President Obama gave a speech reiterating his desire to close Guantánamo. But one official familiar with internal deliberations emphasized that any exchange involving the Afghan prisoners should not be seen as part of efforts the president has ordered to winnow the prison of low-level detainees.

The Taliban offer, which was made at the same time they were opening a long-delayed office in Doha, Qatar, breathed new life into a proposal floated in late 2011 that collapsed amid Congressional skepticism and the strict security conditions the Obama administration sought as part of any exchange. They included the stipulation that the Taliban prisoners be sent to Qatar and forbidden to leave there.

Those conditions, created by the Obama administration to comply with legal restrictions imposed by Congress to prevent any detainees from returning to the battlefield in Afghanistan, led the Taliban to walk away from the negotiations. It is not clear whether the Taliban position on transfers to Qatar, as opposed to outright release and repatriation, has softened.

Any prisoner release, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, is not imminent. The transfer restrictions require 30 days’ notice to lawmakers before any detainee leaves, and the administration has not yet given any notification. The officials would not comment on the record because of the diplomatic and political delicacy of the issue.

One of the leading skeptics of such a deal has been Representative Howard P. McKeon, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. On Thursday, Claude Chafin, a spokesman for Mr. McKeon, said the congressman would want to know what plans the administration had to ensure that the five would remain under watch.

“Absent any actual details, the chairman remains very concerned that these five individuals should never be allowed to re-engage,” Mr. Chafin said.

The details of what the government believes about what the five former Taliban leaders have done were made public in classified military files given to WikiLeaks by Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is now being court-martialed and faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the most serious charges against him. Because the five men have never been given a trial, the quality of the evidence and the credibility of the claims against them in the files — some of which they deny — have not been tested.

Mohammad Nabi Omari is described in the files as “one of the most significant former Taliban leaders detained” at Guantánamo. He is said to have strong operational ties to anti-coalition militia groups, including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Haqqani network. He is also accused of participating in a cell in Khost that was “involved in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces,” maintaining weapons caches and smuggling fighters and weapons.

A former Taliban provincial governor, Mullah Norullah Noori, is also “considered one of the most significant former Taliban officials” at the prison, according to the documents. He was a senior military commander against United States forces and their allies in late 2001.

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Both Mr. Noori and a third detainee being considered in an exchange, Mullah Mohammad Fazl, a former Taliban deputy defense minister, are accused of having commanded forces that killed thousands of Shiite Muslims, a minority in Afghanistan, before the Taliban were toppled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The fourth is Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former top Taliban intelligence official described as “central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces after the 11 September 2001 attacks.” He also helped fighters with Al Qaeda and the Taliban evade capture and arranged for Al Qaeda to train Taliban members in intelligence methods, according to his military file.

The fifth prisoner, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, a former minister of the interior and provincial governor, has contended that he had direct ties to Osama bin Laden and represented the Taliban in talks with Iranian officials seeking their support after Sept. 11, according to the documents.

He is also accused of using his position to “become one of the major opium drug lords in Western Afghanistan.” Described as “extremely intelligent,” Mr. Khairkhwa is said to have claimed to be motivated by public service rather than ideology and pledged to support President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who has called for his release.

The five Taliban leaders are just a subset of 18 Afghans remaining at Guantánamo — out of the 220 taken there by the Bush administration. But the other 13 are accused of far less serious and specific actions, meaning that they are not important enough to be bargaining chips.

With American troops still on the ground in Afghanistan, both Obama administration and Congressional officials say there is genuine concern about releasing high-level leaders if there is any prospect that they could return to rally new attacks.

But the prospect of winning freedom for Sergeant Bergdahl, who is believed to be the only living American prisoner of war, has complicated the calculation, and the politics, of releasing the five — at least if the Taliban ultimately agree to a condition that they stay in Qatar until the end of the war.

One Republican staff member on the House Armed Services Committee said that the administration had yet to present any concrete, detailed plan for how such an exchange would work. An administration official said that kind of consultation with lawmakers would be a prerequisite to a deal, if any ultimately emerges.

“If we were going to make this decision, which we have not yet decided to do, we would consult with Congress, as we always do on these issues,” the administration official said. “We are not looking to quickly do something that they wouldn’t be aware of, and for which there wouldn’t be proper oversight.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 21, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Taliban Talks Could Depend On Detainees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe